It’s dark. There are black lights. There are disco balls. There’s loud music and occasional sirens and a fun little light show if you get a strike. The four of us share a lane, sandwiched between twogroups of teens. Bastien asks for bumpers, and the girl running the shoe rentals has never been less amused by anything in her life.
If Bastien and Thalia notice that Javier and I hardly speak and barely make eye contact, they don’t say anything. Which I think means they don’t notice. I’ve yet to see them not give one another shit for something, so we must be doing a pretty good job of acting like stepsiblings who’ve never had sex.
“How am I supposed to dothat?” Bastien’s asking toward the end of the second game. He gestures at the two bowling pins left, one on either side of the lane, indignantly.
“You don’t. Hurry up,” says Thalia, sprawled in an uncomfortable plastic seat.
“Did you watch the demonstration?” Javier asks. “The turkey can do it.”
Bastien marches back to where we’re standing and stares up at the screen over the lane, where a cartoon turkey has just finished knocking two pins down with one ball.
“That turkey’s a good bowler,” I offer. “I’m really impressed.”
“It’s a cartoon,” Bastien huffs.
“Still. Incredible athleticism.”
“Can you not bowl as well as a turkey?” Javier asks.
“Right now, the rankings are one, turkey, two, Madeline, and then alllll the way at the bottom, Bastien,” Thalia says from her seat. “You have to scroll pretty far.”
“Hahaha,” says Bastien, who rolls his eyes unconvincingly. “Yeah, I get it—I’m not that good of a bowler.”
“If you practice, maybe you can beat the turkey someday,” Javier says as Bastien plucks a ball from the rack, then whirls around to face us.
“It’s an animation!” He points up at the screen. “It’s got—cartoon physics! That’s cheating!”
“No rules against cartoon physics,” Thalia calls, and Bastien flips her off, then turns to the bowling lane. Behind his back, Thalia and Javier fist bump, and then Thalia holds her fist out to me.
I bump it, too, even though I’m not totally sure what we’re celebrating. Annoying a younger sibling? Is it really that hard?
Then I glance up at Javier, who’s standing next to me, colored lights playing over his face, and I offer him my fist because why the hell not. If this is the relationship we’re going to have, may as well have it and enjoy it, right?
“Oh.” He blinks at my hand. “Yeah, sure.”
Javier goes to fist bump me andmisses, which makes his knuckles graze my boob, which causes me to make a funny squeaking sound, which makes Javier say “Shit, sorry!” in a very alarmed way, and now both his siblings are looking at us. I’m desperately glad for cosmic bowling and its attendant darkness because I think my entire body is tomato red right now.
Very carefully, we redo the fist bump. Properly this time.
“Thanks,” I say once it’s accomplished, which is a very normal thing to say after a fist bump.
“Yeah, nice,” Javier says in response. We nod at each other.
Over on the uncomfortable chairs, Thalia’s giving us some kind of look, but I can’t really see it so it doesn’t count.
Later,after two more rounds of bowling, some terrible nachos, beers for Bastien, Thalia, and me, and an intense air hockey tournament in the arcade, we’ve said our totally normal goodbyes and I’m getting into the car when Javi jogs over, waving something.
“I found it,” he says and holds out my scarf.
“Oh.” I can’t meet his eyes, so I stare intently at the scarf while I take it back. “Thanks.”
“I didn’t think you’d actually left it, but then the other day I saw something green dangling off Zorro’s cat tower and—right, anyway, there you go.”
“That…rascal,” I say. “Scarf thief.”
“You know, it’s probably got cat fur on it. If you want, I think I’ve got one of those lint rollers in my car?—”
“It’s fine,” I cut him off. “I think I’ve got one.”
